but finding her obstinate and resolved in earnest to the contrary he feared her last blow and providing for himself by a most dastardly tendernesse did with his owne hands dresse and make a wound to his own liking To be patient or to suffer as wee please is not Patience He could bear the anger but not the hatred and feud of Fortune That is poore valour that bears onely the flourishes and pickearings of an Enemy but dares not receive his full charge A weak man will for some time stand under a great burthen but he that carries it through and home is the strongest Cato then was a most base pusillanimous combatant hee quitted his ground and left Fortune in the field not only unconquer'd but untir'd and flourishing with a whole Arme which hee had not yet drawn bloud from What Inconstancy can be greater then his who was more Inconstant than Vertiginous Fortune Or who more a Coward then he that fled and ran away swifter and sooner than her wheeles To call Cato then either constant wise or good is most unjust nay more it is an Injurie to mankind to call him a man who hath deserved so ill of Wisedome and men by thinking that any Cause or Chance in this World can be worthy of a wise mans death I would he had read the Conclusion of Theodorus not the dissertation of Socrates Theodorus Cythereus most truly affirmed that there never can be cause enough for a wise man to cast away his life And he proves it by invincible reason For him saith he that contemns humane Chances to cast away his life because of them how contrary is it to his own Judgment which esteems nothing good but what is Virtuous nothing vitious but what is evill I wish when he did read Socrates that he had also understood him for then he should have heard him condemning that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or mad refuge of selfemurther and commanding him not to stirre out of his appointed station without full Orders from the great Generall of life Why then dost thou cry up Cato for a great leader who was a most cowardly common Souldier that forsook his Charge and betrayed the Fort intrusted to him by the Prince of Life But here thou wilt reply that his last nights contemplation just before he quitted it was Immortality The end he did study it for made it then unseasonable And I know not seeing he was but an Imperfect speculator in the Doctrine of Immortality why hee should be so hasty to try whither Eternity was perishable or not by casting away his own He should have expected it as he did expect the change of Fortune which till that night he alwaies esteemed Mortall He should have prepared for it by makeing triall of his Constancie before Eternity What praise then either of Patience or Fortitude hath he deserved he did no more then the most effeminate Hemon and Sardanapalus O the glorious Act of Cato then equall to his that handled the Spindles An Act of Women Evadne Jocasta and Auctolia An Act of Whores Sappho and Phaedra An Act of Wenches Thysbe Biblis Phillis and Anaxarete An Act of Boyes Iphis and Damocles An Act of Doting decrepit men Aegeus Sesostris and Timathes An Act of Crazie diseased Persons Aristarchus and Eratâ—sthenes An Act of Madmen Aristotle Empedocles Timagoras and Lucretius A rare commendation indeed for a wise man to have done that which Whores Wenches and Boyes sick men and Madmen did whome either the Impatience of their lust or Fortune made Impatient of life Whither thou wilt say that Cato kill'd himself to fly from Fortune or to find Immortality thou canst in neither deny his Impatience either of Joy or else of feare and in both of life I would he had been as patient now of life as he was sometimes of thirst That voice of Honour upon the Sands of Libya was his where the Râ—man Army like to perish with thirst a Common Souldier that had taken up a litle muddy Water in his Helmet presenting it to him had in stead of thanks this bitter rebuke Base man couldst thou think Cato alone Wants courage to be dry but him none Look'd I so soft breath'd I such base desires Not proofe against this Libye Sun 's weak fires That shame and plague on thee more justly lye To drinke alone when all our troops are dry Here was a glorious Voice and there followes it a more glorious hand For with brave rage he flung it on the Sand And the spilt draught suffic'd each thirsty band This manly Virtue he degenerated from in his last Act and all his friends wisely bending to the present necessity hee onley broke The people being all taken he only fled To see Cato a sufferer in the publicke miserie had been a Publick comfort they would have judged it happinesse to have been unhappy with him It is Honour to suffer with the Honourable and the Tyranny of Fortune is much allayed and almost welcome to us when shee equally rageth against the good and Noble as against our private selves If as he refused the remedy of thirst he had also rejected this ill remedy against misfortune his glory had been perfect Wee must then be the Patients of life and of this Patience which I thinke the greatest of any wee have two eminent examples in Job and Tobiah who not onely provoked by Fortune but by their wives also defended their Calamities in the defense of life For the other Patience in death which is the least the example of Abel sufficed designed by the wonderfull Counsell of God untill the manifestation of his Son that great Arch-type of Patience in life and death to suffer though Innocent a violent and unexperienced death that the first onset of fate which was most furious meeting in him with an unconquerable Patience might be soâ—â— what tamed and the weapons of death having their edge dulled in the first conflict might afterwards be of lesse terrour to mankind Just Abel was the first that shew'd us the way of dying when the name of death as yet untri'd was most formidable unto life that he might teach man Patience in his death and leave it to posterity as a Medicine found out by him But when men by a sad experience grown wise found out a greater Evill then death which to religious men was this sinfull life and to the miserable and Impatient their own lives then were Job and Tobiah set forth the convincing examples of Patience in life who endured a life more bitter than death lest by not enduring they should to their misery adde sinne They taught the World that Patience was a better Medicine for Evills than death and withstood the opinions of the Lunatick people Falsely did Euripides arrogating a laudable Title to death terme it The greatest medicine of Evills 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 As if he in another place had not term'd it the greatest of Evills If death then be not its own Medicine
more as Bears Leopards Wolves Dragons Adders and Vipers were gathered together about him and ready to seize upon him what would not he give to be freed from the violence and rage of such destroyers What greater felicity could he desire then to be redeemed from such an horrid and fatall distressâ— And is it a lesser blessing to be delivered from greater evills We are surrounded with calamities torn by inordinate wishes hated by the world persecuted prest and trodden upon by our enemies disquieted with threatnings which also torture and dishearten some for in pusillanimous dispositions fear makes words to be actions and threats to be torments Death is a divine remedy which cures all these evil Death alone is the cause that temporal miseries are not eternal And I know not how that came to be feared which brings with it as many helps as the world brings damages Danger it self is a sufficient motive to make us in love w th security Death only secures us from troubles Death heals and glorifies all those wounds which are received in a good cause When Socrates had drank off his potion of hemlock he commanded that sacrifices should be offered to Aesculapius as the Genius of Medicine He knew that Death would cure him It was the Antidote against that poysonous Recipe of the Athenian Parliament Tyranny travels not beyond Death which is the Sanctuary of the good and the Lenitive of all their sorrows Most ridiculous were the tears of Xerxes and worthily checkt by his Captain Artabazus when seated on the top of an hill and viewing his great Army wherein were so many hands as would have served to overturn the world to levell mountains and drain the seas yea to violate Nature and disturb Heaven with their noyse and the smoak of their Camp he fell to a childish whining to consider in what a short portion of time all that haughty multitude which now trampled upon the face of the earth would be layd quietly under it He wept to think that all those men whose lives notwithstanding hee hastned to sacrifice to his mad ambition should dye within the compasse of an hundred yeares The secular death or common way of mortality seemed very swift unto him but the way of war slaughter he minded not It had been more rational in him to weep because death was so slow and lazie as to suffer so many impious inhumane souldiers to live an hundred years and disturb the peace and civill societies of Mankind If as hee saw his Army from that hill he had also seen the calamities and mischief they did with the tears and sorrows of those that suffered by them he had dried his eyes and would not have mourned though he had seen death seising upon all those salvages and easing the world of so vast an affliction He would not have feared that which takes away the cause of fear That is not evill which removes such violent and enormous evills If I might ask those that have made experiment of life and death whither they would chuse if it were granted them either to live again or to continue in their state of dissolution I am sure none would chuse life but the wicked those that are unworthy of it for no pious liver did ever repent of death and none ever will The Just desire not this life of the unjust which were it offered them they would fear it more now being at rest then ever they feared death when they lived The story runnes that Stanislaus the Polonian a man of marvellous holinesse and constancy had the opportunity to put this question and the respondent told him that he had rather suffer the paines of dissolution twice over again then live once He feared one life but did not fear to dy thrice Having this Solution from the experienced it is needless and fruitlesse to question on the living If Soules were Praeexistent as one Origen dreamt as Cebes Plato Hermes and other Philosophers the great Fathers of Hereticks have affirmed Wee might have reason to conclude that they would obstinately refuse to be imprisoned in the wombs of women and wallow in Seminal humours What if it were told them that they must dwell nine monthes in a thick darknesse and more then nine years perhaps all the years of their sojourning in hallucinations and the darknesse of ignorance what if the paines the exigencies the hunger and thirst they must endure before they can be acquainted with the miseries of life were laid before thâ—m The Infant while he is yet in the womb is taught necessity Quest for foode makes him violate that living Prison and force his way into the World And now comes he forth according to the Sentiment of Hippocrates to seek for Victualls the provision which proceeded from his Mother being grown too little for him But he comes from one prison into another and breaks through the first to enlarge his own which he carries with him But if the Soules â—hus incarcerated like Prisoners through a grate might behold the various plagues and diseases of those that are at liberty as Palsies Passions of the heart Convulsions Stranguries the Stone the Gout the Wolfe the Phagedaena and an hundred other horrid incurable Evils such as Pherecides Antiochus and Herod were tormented with or that fearful sicknesse of Leuthare which was so raging and furious that she did eat her own flesh and drink her blood in the extremity of the pain Or if they might see those Evills which man himselfe hath sought and found out for himself as emulations warres bloodshed confusion and mutual destruction Is there any doubt to be made think you but they would wish themselves freed from such a miserable estate or that their intellectuall light were were quite extinguished that they might not behold such horrid and manifold calamities Plato imputed the suspension of Reason in Infants and the hallucinations of Childhood to the terrour and astonishment of the Soules which he supposed them to be possessed with because of their sudden translation from the Empyreal light into the darke and grosse prisons of flesh and this inferiour World as if such a strange and unexpected change like a great and violent fall had quite doated them and cast asleep their intellectuall faculties Proclus assisted this conjecture of Plato with another argument drawne from the mutability and the multitude of Worldly Events which in the uncertaine state of this life the Soules were made subject unto Adde to this that the merriest portion of life wihch is youth is in both sexes bedewed with tears and the flowers of it are sullied and fade away with much weeping and frequent sadneâ—se Children also want not their sorrowes The Rod blasteth all their innocent joyes and the sight of the School-master turnes their mirth into mourning Nay that last Act of life which is the most desirable to the Soul I mean old Age is the most miserable The plenteous Evills of frail life fill the old Their wasted
still and the incertainty as well as the certainty of it This divine devise of death so pleased God and was so necessary for the good of man that though by the merits of his dying Son he changed all the former things blotting out ordinances abolishing Ceremonies opening the gates of Heaven to all believers yet would not he Exterminate death It was out of his mercy that he refused to abrogate it that while corruption reigned death also might reign over it lest this poyson should want its Antidote We have therefore no just cause to complain of death which is an Invention conducing to our great good and the incertainty of the time though it most vexeth us is notwithstanding the most beneficial Circumstance that attends it The time of life is certainly known there is but one entrance to the light of this World The Ceremony of dying is not formal It keeps not to one time nor one manner but admits of all times and many manners Life comes into the World but one way but hath many waies to go out It was the benevolence of God to open so many doors to those that flye for refuge One way is more then enough to find out dangers but to escape them many are but necessary Death is not a burthen of seaven or nine monthes but life must have time before it sets forth And what are the first encounters of it Tears â—nd Bonds It cannot avoyd Evills and it is afeared to bear them therefore it delaies time and when it cannot lurk any longer it comes forth Crying Death leads us forth to joy and liberty Therefore it stayes not it seeks no corners nor protractions Nor doth death free us onely from suffering Evills but keeps us also from doing any To be good every day thou mâ—st dye dayly The incertainty also of the time of death and the manner of it like a busie Monitour warnes thee to do good and to be good at all times and in every place private or publick And the inevitablenâ—sse of it takes away all Excuse or pretensions for thy impreparation The Glory of death is also much augmented by its facility in redressing the difficulties of life It is not without the Divine counsel and a speciall priviledge that the Soule of man is so easily parted from the body the life of beasts is more tenacious and will suffer much indignitie and fury before it leaves them There is nâ— living creature more fraile none more weak then man the lightest strâ—ake fells him the Soul is very nice and will quickly cast off the body if it persists but in the least Indisposition A single hair killed Fabius and a Grape Anacreon these contemptible instruments destroy'd them as effectually as the thunderbolt did Esculapius Coma dyed as easily as he could wish and Baptist a Mirandulus as he could think His Soule quitted his body without any grudging without a disease without poyson without violence or any fatall mischance No door can keep death out it defeats life with its own weapons and kills us with the very Cordials and comforts of it Perhapâ— no kind of death is more violent then thâ—â— which sets upon us with the forces oâ— lâ—â—e because it kills when life is most vigorous and pleasant Their owne wishes have destroyed many And life hath oftentimes perished by her own contrivements Clidemus was killed with honour Diagoras with joy Plato with rest and Philemon with laughter This last is both a merry and a frequent destroyer and freed Sicily from one Tyrant Death also makes use sometimes of our very virtues to exanimate us Shame killed Diodorus and the Mother of Secundus the Philosopher dyed with blushing and an excessive modestie Life is a fraile possession it is a flower that requires not rude and high winds but will fall in the very whispers and blandishments of fair weather It is folly to labour to retain that which wil away to fly from that which will meet us every where yea in the way we fly is a vain and foolish industry Whither we seek death or avoyd it it will find us out Our way to fly and our very flight end both in death by hasting from it we make hast to it Life is a journey whose end cannot be mist it is a steady ayming at dissolution Though we fetch wide Compasses and traverse our way never so often we can neither lengthen it nor be out of it What path soever we take it is the Port-roade to death Though youth and age are two distant Tropicks of life yet death is as near to the one as to the other And though some live more and some lesse yet death is their equal neighbour and will visit the young as soon as the old Death is a Crosse to which many waies leade some direct and others winding but all meet in one Center It matters not which thou takest nor whither thou art young or aged But if thou beest young thou maist come sooner thither then the old who is both doting and weary It was necessary that a Sanctuary being provided for the distressed the way to it should be easie pervious and at an indifferent distance from all parts Good should be diffusive and the gate that leads to it must be without doors and bolts The entrance into this life is narrow and difficult it is difficultly attained difficultly retained and lyes alwaies in the power of another Every man may take life from us none can take death Life is subject to the Tyranny of men but death is not life makes Tyrants and death unmakes them Death is the slaves prerogative â—oyall and the Sabbath of the afflicted Leo Iconomachus the Emperor made the birth of both sexes tributary but death never paid taxation It was not lawfull in his reigne to get Children without paying for them every Infant so soon as borne was to give him contribution they paid then the Excise of life Death onely frees us from these Impositions of Tyrants And wilt thou then condemn liberty and that maturity of death by which it ripens every age wilt thou the divine liberality blame because thy life is short or may be so thou hast no reason to find fault with the years already given thee because thou shalt not have more thou mayst as well quarrel with Nature because she made not thy dimensions larger and thy body heavier by eighty or a hundred pounds he that measured thy proportion measured thy time too and too much of this last would have been as troublesome and unweildy as too much of the first for Long life opprest with many woes Meets more the further still it goes Death in every age is seasonable beneficial and desirable It frees the old man from misery the youthfull from sin and the infant from both It takes the aged in the fullnesse of their time It turnes the flowers of youth into fruit and by a compendious secret improvement matures infancy leading it into the Gate of Heaven
who neither can enjoy ought that is pleasant at the present nor lay up for themselves any hope of true joyes hereafter They misse the fruition of this short life and can have no hope of the everlasting They abuse these temporal blessings and shall never be admitted to use the eternall Their substance here is very little but their hope there is none at all A most wretched and deplorable condition unless they make a virtue of this desperate necessity and lay hold on the onely soveraign remedy of bettering their estate by submitting in time to the wholsome rules of heavenly and saving reason Especially because the goodliest things of this present time are such rags and fragments that he that loseth the whole fraught and true treasure of that one precious life which is to come may be justly said to lose both It remaines then that we direct and fixe all the powers of our minds upon the hope of the life to come Which hope that you may morefully and clearly apprehend it I shall manifest unto you under a type or example taken from temporal things If some man should offer unto another five peeces of silver this day but promise him five hundred peeces of gold if he would stay till the next morning and put him to his choice whither he would have the silver at present or the gold upon the day following is there any doubt to be made but he would chuse the greater sum though with a little delay Goe you and doe the like Compare the Crummes and perishing pittance in this short life with the glorious and enduring rewards of the eternall And when you have done chuse not the least and the worst when you may have the greatest and the best The short fruition of a little is not so beneficial as the expectation of plenty But seeing that all the fraile goods of this world are not onely seen of us but also possessed by us It is most manifest that hope cannot belong unto this world in which we both see and enjoy those things we delight in For Hope that is seen is not hope for what a man seeth why doth he yet hope for Rom. 8. ver 24. Therefore however hope may be abused and misapplyed to temporal things it is most certaine that it was given to man and ordained for the things that are eternal otherwise it cannot be called hope unlesse something bee hoped for which as yet or for the present life is not had Therefore the substance of our hope in the world to come is more evident and manifest then our hope of substance in the present Consider those objects which are the clearest and most visible when we would best discern them we put them not into our eyes because they are better seen and judged of at a distance It is just so in the case of present things and the future For the present as if put into our eyes are not rightly and undeceivably seen of us but the future because conveniently distant are most clearly discerned Nor is this trust and Confidence wee have of our future happinesse built upon weak or uncertain Authors but upon our Lord and Master JESUS CHRIST that allmighty and faithfull witnesse who hath promised unto the just a Kingdome without end and the ample rewards of a most blessed eternity Who also by the ineffable Sacrament of his humanity being both God and Man reconciled Man unto God and by the mighty and hidden mystery of his passion absolved the World from sinne For which cause he was manifested in the flesh justified in the Spirit seen of Angels preached unto the Gentiles believed upon in the World and received into glory Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name that at the name of JESUS every knee should bow of things in Heaven and things in Earth and things under the Earth And that every tongue should confesse that the Lord JESUS is in glory both God and King before all ages Casting off then the vaine and absurd precepts of Philosophy wherein you busie your selfe to no purpose embrace at last the true and saving Knowledge of Christ You shall find even in that imployment enough for your eloquence and wit and will quickly discern how far these precepts of piety and truth surpasse the conceits and delirations of Philosophers For in those rules which they give what is there but adulterate virtue and false wisedom and what in ours but perfect righteousnesse and sincere truth Whereupon I shall Justly conclude that they indeed usurpe the name of Philosophy but the substance and life of it is with us For what manneâ— of rules to live by could they give who were ignorant of the first Cause and the Fountain of life For not knowing God and deviating in their first principles from the Author and the Wel-spring of Justice they necessarily erred in the rest Hence it happened that the end of all their studies was vanity and dissention And if any amongst them chanced to hit upon some more sober and honest Tenets these presently ministred matter of pride and Superstitiousnesse so that their very Virtue was not free from vice It is evident then that these are they whose Knowledge is Earthy the disputers of this world the blind guides who never saw true justice nor true wisedome Can any one of that School of Aristippus be a teacher of the truth who in their Doctrine and Conversation differ not from swine and unclean beasts seeing they place true happinesse in fleshly lusts whose God is their belly and whose glory is in their shame Can he be a Master of Sobriety and Virtue in whose School the riotous the obscene and the adulterer are Philosophers But leaving these blind leaders I shall come againe to speak of those things which were the first motives of my writing to you I advise you then and I beseech you to cast off all their Axioms orgeneral Maxims collected out of their wild and irregular disputations wherein I have knowne you much delighted to imploy those excellent abilities bestowed upon you in the study of holy Scripture the wholsom instructions of Christian Philosophers There shall you be fed with various and delightfull learning with true and infallible wisedome There to incite you to the Faith you shall hear the Church speaking to you though not in these very words yet to this purpose He that believes not the word of God understands it not There you shall hear this frequent admonition Feare God because he is your Master honour him because he is your Father There it shall be told you that the most acceptable Sacrifice to God are justice and mercy There you shall be taught that If you love your self you must necessarily love your neighbour for you can never do your selfe a greater Courtesie then by doing good to another There you shall be taught that there can be no worldly cause so great as to make
he that violates his own body and makes way for the Soul to flye out with his own hands is damned by the very Act but if another doth it to him it is both his Salvation and his Crown The heathens esteemed it no honour for Captives to have their bonds loosed It was their freedome but not their glory When the jugde himself did break off their Chaines that they accounted honorable By this Ceremony did Vespasian and Titus acknowledge the worth of Joseph the Jew This vindicated his integrity By cutting his bonds with their Imperial hand they freed him both from captivity and disgrace Titus said that if they would break off his fetters and not stay to take them off his honour would be so perfectly repaired by it as if he had been never bound nor overcome The same difference in point of honour is betwixt the naturall death and the violent betwixt dying when wee are full of daies and the death which Tyrants impose upon us when we are mangled and grinded by their fury This honour is then greatest when the body is not dissolved but distorted and broken into peeces Certainly the best men have ever perished by the violence of Tyrants nature to preserve her innocence being very backward and unwilling as it were to take away such great and needfull examples of goodnesse Treachery and violence were ordained for the just in the dâ—ath of Abel who dyed by the wicked This better sort of death was in him consecrated to the best men those persons whom Nature respects and is loath to medle with envy laies hands upon Whom the one labours to preferre the other plotteth to destroy Nor deals she thus with the good only but with the eminent and mighty too thus she served Hector Alexander and Caesar the goodliest object is alwaies her aim When Thrasybulus the Astrologer told Alexander the Roman that he should end his daies by a violent death he answered that he was very glad of it for then said he I shall dye like an Emperour like the best and the greatest of men and not sneak out of the World like a worthlesse obscure fellow But the death of these Glorioli was not truly glorious I have onely mentioned them because that a passive death though wanting religion hath made their honour permanent That death is the truly glorious which is seald with the joy of the sufferers spirit whose Conscience is ravished with the kisses of the Dove Who can look upon his tormentour with delight and grow up to Heaven without diminution though made shorter on Earth by the head This is the death which growes pretious by contempt and glorious by disgrace Whose sufferer runs the race set before him with patience and finisheth it with joy We are carefull that those things which are our own may be improved to the utmost and why care wee not for death what is more ours then mortality Death should not be feared because it is simply or of it self a great good and is evill to none but to those that by living ill make their death bad What ever evil is in death it is attracted from life If thou preservest a good Conscience while thou livest thou wilt have no feare when thou dyest thou wilt rejoyce and walke homeward singing It is life therefore that makes thee fear death If thou didst not fear life if life had not blasted the joyes of death thou wouldst never be afraid of the end of sorrowes Death therefore is of it self innocent sincere healthfull and desirable It frees us from the malignancie and malice of life from the sad necessities and dangerous errours we are subject to in the body That death whose leaders are Integrity and virtue whose cause is Religion is the Elixir which gives this life its true tincture and makes it immortal To dye is a common and trivial thing for the good and the bad dye and the bad most of all but to dye willingly to dye gloriously is the peculiar priviledge of good men It is better to leave life voluntarily then to be driven out of it forcibly let us willingly give place unto posterity Esteem not life for its own sake but for the use of it Love it not because thou wouldst live but because thou mayst do good works while thou livest Now the greatest work of life is a good death If life then ought to be lesse esteemed then good works who would not purchase a good death with the losse of life why should we be afeared of politick irreligious Tyrants and an arm of flesh though guarded with steele Nature it selfe threatens us with death and frailty attends us every hour Why will we refuse to dye in a good cause when 't is offered us who may dye ill the very next day after let us not promise our selves a short life when our death assures us of eternal glory But if it were granted that death were neither good nor honourable but evill and fearfull why will not we take care for that which we fear Why do we neglect that which we suspect Why if it be evill do not wee arme and defend our selves against it we provide against dangerous contingencies we labour against casuall losses and we neglect this great and enevitable perill To neglect death and to contemn death are two things none are more carefull of it then those that contemne it none feare it more then those that neglect it and which is strange they fear it not because they have neglected it but they neglect it when they fear it they dare not prepare for it for fear of thinking of it O the madnesse and Idlenesse of mankind to that which they adjudge to be most Evill they come not onely unprepared but unadvisedly and without so much as forethought What mean we what do we look for Death is still working and wee are still idle it is still travelling towards us and we are still slumbering and folding our hands Let us awake out of this darke and sleepy state of mind let us shake off these dreams and vain propositions of diverse lusts let us approve of truth and realities let us follow after those things which are good let us have true joy made sure unto us and a firm security in life in death Sickness and death you are but sluggish things And cannot reach a heart that hath got wings FINIS THE WORLD CONTEMNED IN A Parenetical Epistle written by the Reverend Father EVCHERIVS Bishop of Lyons to his Kinsman VALERIANVS Love not the VVorld neither the things that arâ— in the world If any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him 1 Ioh. 2.15 They are of the world therefore speake they of the world and the world heareth them Chap. 4. vers 5. If the world hate you ye know that it hated me before it hated you Ioh. 15. verse 18. If ye were of the world the world would love his own but because ye are not of the world out I
of those that sin against their own soules can be no authority unto us I beseech you look alwayes upon the vices of others as their shame not your example If it be your pleasure to look for examples seek them rather from that party which though the least yet if considered as it is a distinct body is numerous enough Seek them I say from that party wherein you shall find those ranged who wisely understood wherefore they were born and accordingly while they lived did the businesse of life who eminent for good works and excelling in virtue pruned and drest the present life and planted the future Nor are our examples though of this rare kind only copious but great withall and most illustrious For what worldly nobility what honours what dignity what wisdom what eloquence or learning have not betaken themselves to this heavenly warfare what soveraignty now hath not with all humility submitted to this easie yoke of Christ And certainly it is a madnesse beyond error and ignorance for any to dissemble in the cause of their salvation I could but that I will not be tedious to you out of an innumerable company produce many by name and shew you what eminent and famous men in their times have forsaken this World and embraced the most strict rules of Christian Religion And some of these because I may not omit all I shall cursorily introduce Clement the Roman of the stock of the Caesars and the Antient Linage of the Senatours a person fraught with Science and most skillfull in the liberall Arts betook himself to this path of the just and so uprightly did he walk therein that he was elected to the Episcopal dignity of Rome Gregorie of Pontus a Ministâ—r of holy things famous at first for his humane learning and eloquence became afterwards more eminent by those Divine Graces conferr'd upon him For as the Faith of Ecclesiastical History testifies amongst other miraculous signes of his effectual devotion he removed a Mountain by prayer and dried up a deep lake Gregory Nazianzen another holy Father given also at first to Philosophie and humane literature declined at last those Worldly rudiments and embraced the true and Heavenly Philosophy To whose industry also wee owe no meaner a person then Basil the Great for being his intimate acquaintance and fellow-student in secular Sciences he entred one day into his Auditory where Basilius was then a Reader of Rhetorick and leading him by the hand out of the School disswaded him from that imployment with this gentle reproofe Leave this Vanity and study thy Salvation And shortly after both of them came to be famous and faithfull Stewards in the house of God and have left us in the Church most usefull and pregnant Monuments of their Christian learning Paulinus Bishop of Nola the great Ornament and light of France a person of Princely revenues powerfull eloquence and most accomplish'd learning so highly approved of this our profession that choosing for himself the better part he divided all his Princely Inheritance amongst the poor and afterward filled most part of the World with his elegant and pious writings Hilarius of late and Petronius now in Itaelie both of them out of the fulnesse of Secular honours and power betook themselves to this Course the one entring into the religion the other into the Priesthood And when shall I have done with this great cloud of witnesses If I should bring into the field all those eloquent Contenders for the Faith Firmianus Minutius Cyprian Hilary Chrysostome and Ambrose These I believe spoke to themselves in the same words which another of our profession used as a sparre to drive himâ—elfe out of the Secuâ—ar life into this blessâ—d and Heavenly vocation They said I believe What is this The unlearned get up and lay hold upon the Kingdome of Heaven and we with our learning behold where we wallow in flesh and blood This sure they said and upon this consideration they also rose up and tooke the Kingdome of Heaven by force Having now in part produced these reverend witnesses whose zeal for the Christian faith hath exceeded most of their successours though they also were bred up in secular rudiments perswasive eloquence and the Pomp and fulnesse of honours I shall descend unto Kings themselves and to that head of the World the Roman Empire And here I think it not necessary that those Royal religious Antients of the old World should be mentioned at all Some of their posterity and the most renowned in our Sacred Chronicles I shall make use of as David for Piety Josiah for Faith and Ezechias for Humility The later times also have been fruitfull in this kinde nor is this our age altogether barren of pious Princes who draw near to the Knowledge of the onely true and Immortal King and with most contrite and submissive hearts acknowledge and adore the Lord of Lords The Court as well as the Cloyster hath yeelded Saints of both Sexes And these in my opinion are more worthy your Imitation then the mad and giddy Commonalty for the examples of these carry with them in the World to come Salvation and in the present World Authority You see also how the dayes and the years and all the bright Ornaments and Luminaries of Heaven do with an unwearied duty execute the commands and decrees of their Creatour and in a constant irremissive tenour continue obedient to his ordinances And shall wee for whose use thâ—se lights were created and set in the firmament seeing we know our Masters will and are not ignorant of his Commandements stop our ears against them And to these Vast members of the Universe it was but once told what they should observe unto the end of the World but unto us line upon line precept upon precept and whole volumes of Gods Commandements are every day repeated Adde to this that man for this also is in his power should learn to submit himself to the will of his Creator and to be obedient to his Ordinances for by paying his whole duty unto God he gives withall a good example unto men But if there be any that will not returne unto their maker and be healed can they therefore escape the Arme of their Lord in whose hand are the Spirits of all flesh Whither will they fly that would avoyd the presence of God What Covert can hide them from that Eye which is every where and sees all things Let them heare thee holy David let them heare thee Psalm 139. Whither shall I go from thy presence or whither shall I flee from thy Spirit If I ascend up into Heaven thou art there if I make my bed in Hell bâ—hold thou art there If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the Sea Even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand stall hold me If I say surely the darknesse shall cover me even the night shall be light about thee Yea